Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Merry Cryxmas

It's that time of year again.  The time when the Dragonfather brings his blight to all the little boys, girls and steam powered robots of the world. Despite having a beautiful little 15 point Khador army ready to take for a spin I got myself into the holiday spirit and deployed pGoreshade against the Cyriss army I've been running against for a while.

     Click to see reports of the same Cyriss army against Everblight and Cygnar.

Here's the Goreshade list.  It is extremely heavy on stealth and at 15 points bringing in an extra unit of Bane Thralls from Goreshade's feat is devastating.  In fact I'd say that Goreshade is one of the best Cryx casters at the low point level just for this reason.

  • Goreshade the Bastard
  • Slayer Helljack
  • Deathripper Bonejack
  • Warwitch Siren
  • Withershadow Combine
  • Bane Lord Tartarus
My opponent won the roll and had me set up and go first.  I set up with the Warwitch Siren and Deathripper on my right and the Withershadow on my left.  Cyriss refused my left flank and set up his entire force on my right.

My first turn was pretty basic with Goreshade giving himself and his battlegroup stealth and everything running up into the center to take early board control. Cyriss responded by moving up slightly and lobbing scattered AoE attacks.

End of turn one.

On turn two I moved further into the center, and recast stealth on my battlegroup.  The Withershadow blasted two servitors out of the sky. Cyriss took the opportunity to climb the hill and put some shots into the bonejack.  The random AoEs either failed to connect with anything or didn't roll high enough with blast damage to hurt anyone.  Across the board stealth was causing a lot of pain for my opponent, but the Withershadow were still out of position, my Slayer was staring down an improbably matchup against the opposing Cyriss heavy and the three lights were poised to go after Goreshade if I didn't change the situation on my turn.

End of turn two.

Turn three would be feat turn for Goreshade. The Slayer and Tartarus ran in and knocked out the opposing heavy by taking advantage of the armor debuff from Dark Shroud.  The spell on the heavy triggered, letting it reconstruct within three inches of its current location, back in the forest.  My Warwitch and bonejack jammed what they could on the right side, but failed to connect in any meaningful way and the Withershadow took potshots at the heavy and unengaged light but didn't do much.  Then Goreshade moved up and took advantage of Tartarus' curse to send Bane Thralls to put the heavy down again, knock some damage boxes off the lights and jam up the center.

End Cryx turn 3

Facing down an angry mob of soul-fueled killing machines there wasn't much Cyriss could do. Syntherion floated around in the back, using his feat to have the remaining light 'jacks put some damage on Tartarus and kill a few Bane Thralls.  We played out the rest of the game but with Cryx so far ahead on the attrition game it was pretty clear how things were going to end.

The game went well for me. Taking control of the board center early on turned out to be a good response to the refused flank of my opponent. It kept him pinned into the corner of the board.  Lots of stealth units and an extra mid-game unit of Bane Thralls meant that I was able to blunt Cyriss' shooting prowess and get a strong alpha strike.  As usual with small games like this, taking down the opposing heavy first can really seal the deal.

There are a few things I could have done better:
  • I should have used the Withershadow or Goreshade's spells to strip the reconstruction spell off the enemy heavy before going in for the kill.  If I had, my banes could have all gone after the opposing lights and the game would have been definitively over more quickly.
  • The Wihershadow could have ad more effect.  They were basically stranded on my right flank and got slowed down blasting half point servitors out of the sky.Turn three saw them taking potshots at the heavy jack. I should have run them on turn three to get into better position for Dark Industries.
  • There are better things to bring for Goreshade than the Withershadow.  His lack of upkeep spells means one of the Combine's major benefits is not even. Those points could have been better spent.

So that's the first game of Cryxmas 2013. There's still more than a week left in the year and I'm looking forward to trotting out some of the other Cryx casters before it's over.